Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

Sissy hated country music. I knew a woman said it, but Mom and Sissy were the only women I’d ever really talked to besides Mikal.

But I was sure a woman said it to me. While we were having coffee.

That was definitely wrong. No one from Halo would have coffee with me—especially not date coffee—not even girls from my class. People tend to shy away from religious terrorists who live alone in the woods.

Could I have made it up?

What’s the matter? Tough asked.

“Nothing,” I said. Just that Mikal was gone and it felt like she’d poured battery acid on my brain on the way out.

Ryder looked at me like he knew, but he just spit into his soda bottle.

Fuck him. Wasn’t he dead, anyway?

 

Tough

 

After a while I was able to get Colt to the shower, but it didn’t feel like I should leave him alone, so I sat on the toilet lid and waited for him to get done.

“This would’ve ended by now if it wasn’t real. Or at least gotten…bad. Well, if I’m going to believe anything, might as well be—”

So far, waiting on Colt to get done had mostly consisted of listening to him talk to himself.

If I tried, I could make myself hear past Colt to my bedroom. I found Desty’s heartbeat and focused in. Still too slow, still unconscious.

I knew she would wake up when it went back to normal, but it felt like that was taking forever. Had I really used that much bite sedative on her? Mitzi had never sedated me when she bit. Now that I was thinking about it, though, I’d always felt a little high afterward. Maybe it was something vamps could learn to control. Maybe I could figure out how to keep from using so much so this wouldn’t happen next time.

Yeah, and maybe Desty wouldn’t care that I’d almost killed her and had sex with her mutilated corpse in a pool of her own blood.

“What the hell?” Colt said. I could hear him shaking his head, hard, like he was trying to get something out.

Oh. I forgot you could still hear me and, uh, see stuff, I said. This is my first day with a connection, too. Sorry about the vamp porn. Apparently we’re some sick fucks.

Unless it was just me.

“It’s the crow magic,” Colt said. “Primal stuff like blood and sex feed it. That’s why vamps get off on mutilation and killing and freak out when they catch on fire.”

You try to stay calm while you’re burning like a grease rag, I said. I kicked the pile of Colt’s clothes on the floor with the toe of my boot. His shirt was stiff from the dried venom and blood. I think your Lucky shirt’s done for.

“What’s that piece of shit, anyhow, like, twelve years old? Good fucking riddance to old fucking rubbish,” Colt said. Then he said, “Can’t we wash it or something? I think the Lucky logo was just starting to kick in.”

I took a long breath so I could blow it back out. I know I didn’t need to breathe anymore, but it helped.

So Colt was nuts. But the joke about the shirt was one he would’ve made. And really, it could’ve been a whole lot worse, considering how long he’d had Mikal messing with his head. He hadn’t tried to kill himself or anybody else yet and he wasn’t begging me to tell him what to do, so he had a leg up on the other familiars Mikal had cast off. He was crazy, but he was still Colt.

Maybe he would’ve made some sense if I could’ve heard him through the vamp connection, but either God had fixed it so the connection only went one way for us or something had gone wrong when I tried to make Colt. Hell, maybe the crazy was keeping me from being able to hear his thoughts, I don’t know.

I’ll ask Harper about the shirt, I told him. She was able to get the blood out of my hat.

“Thanks.”

Yeah. You done in there yet?

“It’s hard to get this off.”

That’s what she said, I thought it at the same time as Colt said, “That’s what she said.”

“See? I’m not all gone,” he said. Then he said, “Yeah, well, I’m saving my impressed face for when you remember where you live.”

I pushed in hard on my eyes. I needed a drink. Why hadn’t anyone come up with blood beer yet? Vamps had been around forever, it wasn’t like they hadn’t had plenty of time.

“Hey, Tough?”

What?

“We didn’t talk after you left.” Colt said it like he was asking me.

Nope, never.

“Then how do I know what Mitzi did to you?”

Probably because everybody knows about her and Jason’s bright idea by now.

“Not that. I mean, after you first started sleeping with her. When you told her you were falling in love with her.”

For a second, I couldn’t say anything. I shook my head and stood up.

We’re not talking about this, I said.

“How do I know what Mitzi said to you?” Colt asked.

I don’t know and I don’t care. Get cleaned up. You’re going to run out of hot water.

“It gets hard for vampires to feel after they’ve been dead for a long time. She wanted to hurt you because you could still feel it.”

What are you, an expert on vamps now?

Colt thought about it for a minute.

“Somebody told me that,” he said. “I hung around the tattoo shop a lot, didn’t I?” Then he said, “No shit? You figure that out all by yourself, Inktastic? Fuck you, Born Country. I was just saying I must’ve picked up some crow stuff from Lonely and his gang.”

I squeezed my broken rib and looked up at the ceiling. The top parts